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A Six Sigma Response?

Sanya Weathers at Eating Bees wrote in her seminal piece on the five things that will tank your community ‘(4) if you are a community manager that is ignoring the eighteen whiners on the boards ignoring them will hurt the community when all eighteen of them are saying the same thing.  You are the one who is wrong, not them.’  But, what is ‘not ignoring?’

There are a few shades of response a community manager or a developer can write, and unfortunately the most common seems to be something along the lines of “your concerns are noted, and have been passed along or considered.”  In my opinion, as a player, this response is only marginally better than being ignored.  I don’t understand why the responder does not employ one of the most basic of management techniques: active listening.  Repeat the players’ concerns in a condensed, polite manner, and some of the most acidic of criticizers will melt.  “Hey, this dude is on our side.”  Shocker, I know.  Plus, many community managers have to digest and reiterate player concerns to the developers anyway; might as well double-dip on the work already done.

Orion, a developer for Lord of the Rings Online, did just this in his most recent blog post.  He reiterated in a condensed version the complaints about hard mode/radiance gear/radiance gating in a few short paragraphs.  My kinship went bananas.  One of the guild leaders wrote “if he told us after [the active listening response] that it was ‘working as intended,’ I would’ve still been happy because they understand our problem.”  Well of course.  They have understood our problem all along.  Certainly there are varying levels of detail in the response, and I would submit that the more detail in the response that mirrors the actual complaint the more soothed the savage beasts will be.  Active listening in a super-condensed manner might not give the full result.

–Ravious
till Max said “be still”

Guild Wars 2 Dust Bunnies

Apart from the usual forum bickering, there has been some pretty decent detective work regarding Guild Wars 2 the past week or so.  I would like to share.

First, 4thVariety disclosed that he or she keeps notes on trademark licensing and domain registration that ArenaNet has done.  4thVariety does this by comparing the attorney NCSoft uses for ArenaNet work and other work.  Some very interesting tidbits ensue.  On April 11, 2007, BlightedEmpires.com was registered by Peter J. Wilsey, who registered other ArenaNet websites.  Guild Wars 2 was announced only two weeks earlier.  On March 12, 2009, the domain name was refreshed.  Could this possibly be the subtitle for Guild Wars 2 – a game where dragons awoke and destroyed nations? (UPDATE: This trademark has gone abandoned.)

The second interesting thing was found from voice actors’ resumes.  It seems that many voice actors are including Guild Wars 2 as work they have done.  Voice acting requires content and story (especially for “two major characters”).  Content and story are one of the final legs of development.  Concordantly… the dawn might be breaking soon.  For a poor benchmark, Warhammer Online released a video podcast on adding voice acting in March, 2008.  Warhammer Online was released September, 2008.  On the other hand, The Old Republic has started voice acting for their fully voice acted epic, which may be as far off as November 2010, or farther.

Regardless, we are going to get news later this year, possibly at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) on ArenaNet’s back doorstep, or likely after Aion’s launch dust settles.

–Ravious
irrevocably human

I, MMO Investor

Valve’s Gabe Newell got an interesting blog-bite about players funding games to be developed.  Reminds me of buying pork belly stock.  MMOs that follow subscription models are already halfway there.  Subscribers are not just paying for the ability to play on the MMO.  They are also expecting new patches, new content, new technology upgrades, and so on.  Even with over 5,000,000 subscribers-worth of revenue Blizzard cannot churn out content fast enough for World of Warcraft.  The game then becomes a hopeful chat room community of investors.

This just does not go for subscription MMOs, but they are the most representative.  Players expect the MMO to be a living thing whether it follows Guild Wars or Wizard 101’s business model.  Once the game begins to feel stagnant and hopes begin to die, players will flag to another ship.  It would be nice to make developer decisions like a publicly-traded shareholders meeting, but we would probably make the wrong ones anyway.

The one other “hint” of MMO investment might be in the beta stage.  This is two-pronged with one being realistic (for now).  The first prong comes from pre-orders and getting pre-release access to the game.  While the gamer usually pays the same amount for the game whether he or she pre-ordered or not, the developer/publisher gets a read on future sales.  They can use this data to further excite vendors, newssites, and fans thereby generating more sales and money.  The unrealistic prong could be asking the gamer to pay extra to get in to the testing phase.  I saw plenty of gamers that would do this without question for Warhammer Online.  Could this small amount of money help final development more than hurt future sales?  Currently the answer seems to be “no” because I haven’t seen anyone willing to use this risky business model.

I know that Newell was approaching things from a more early development standpoint.  Would you be willing to buy Blizzard’s next MMO now even if you wouldn’t get it until 2012 when you might be funding it right now by merely playing World of Warcraft?  Fool me twice…

–Ravious
either way a sale is made

Referrer Links 2: Browser Games

This is the other post, where you can leave comments with referrer links for whatever browser-based game you play that gives you a link to have all your friends click. Visit your MiniCity? Have them killed by zombies and werewolves? Sign up for your flash games site? Great.

I recommend linking with the site name, what it is, and what you (and they) get for using that link. Example: KONGREGATE, a flash games site. If you sign up from that, I get points that put a useless number by my name. You get absolutely nothing.

If you would like to have a post removed (quit, game run by evil aliens, etc.), comment again or e-mail me, and I can delete old comments. We may have multiple, competing codes/links for the same game: whee! If the game in question is a “real” game, like an MMO or something that would not get you banned from most message boards for posting it, use this post. Please be patient if the comment does not appear immediately, as I will need to check the spam filter before and after work.

: Zubon

Referrer Links 1: MMOs

I have been meaning to do this for a while, and a comment yesterday reminded me. Many games give you bonuses for inviting friends and such, mostly if you are the source for their initial subscription. Feel free to use the comments from this thread to toss up your referral links, “e-mail me for a code,” codes, etc., whatever is relevant to your game. I suggest putting the name of the game in all caps at the top, then saying what they need to do to get the referral, then listing what you and they get from it. “What they get from it” is a useful incentive if they get more than just signing up on their own. City of Heroes, for example, has “welcome back” codes (account inactive for 90+ days) that gives you and your friend 15 days each when they re-subscribe. This is good for everyone, except perhaps the company involved.

Example: WIZARD101, a kid-friendly MMO that plays a lot like Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokémon. Friend code: 49090-08124-81429-46863. If you use my code and subscribe or buy $10 in crowns, we each get 1250 crowns. You might also get a pet or something; the page equivocates.

If you would like to have a post removed (unsubscribed, ran out of codes, etc.), comment again or e-mail me, and I can delete old comments. We may have multiple, competing codes/links for the same game: whee! If the game in question is one of those browser-based things like “have all your friends click this link to be eaten by zombies” or MiniCities or such, please use this post. Please be patient if the comment does not appear immediately, as I will need to check the spam filter before and after work.

: Zubon

Video Game Voyeurism

I’ve always liked to spectate people playing video games, ever since the ability was added in online games.  Guild Wars World Championships were to me what the World Series was to a baseball fan.  I would watch and chat with other players in observer mode  focusing on the intense Guild Versus Guild battles between the best players in the world.  Or there was that one time Nihilum did a live Sunwell Plateau (World of Warcraft) raid from four different vantage points.  Even a quick break in Team Fortress 2 to spectate a spy taking down five cart pushers can be entertaining while I chew down some air-travelled White Castles. 

I had an all-time high (or low) this weekend amassing hours of video game voyeurism via X-Fire’s live video streams.  A gamer with a good connection and computer can stream in real-time the game he or she is playing, while a chat room is created so that viewers can chat with the player and create a running peanut gallery.  This past weekend I vicariously “played” Prototype, Mass Effect, and even Darkfall.  I have never experienced any of these games, but I am already planning to buy Mass Effect.  I also have a much better feel for Darkfall watching a live stream than any “professional” reviewer can give me.  The streaming gamer is a personal performer, demoer, and spokesperson for the game.  Developers couldn’t ask for better advertising.

There was one small hitch.  The most popular and most numerous live streams seem to be World of Warcraft arena PvP.  I don’t understand this because the information to noise ratio is pitifully low when watching World of Warcraft PvP via the lowered-resolution stream.  I can only surmise that the live streams become some sort of PvP community in and of themselves.  This is not necessarily the hitch.  The hitch is I did want to see some World of Warcraft raid or dungeon, but I had to pull up each World of Warcraft stream in order to figure out what the player was showing.  Requiring a little description for each gamer’s stream would help greatly (e.g., Mass Effect just starting, WoW arenakekeke, L4D noob watch me suck).

The service is still in beta for X-Fire users, but I expect that whole communities and services could occur around this feature.  Instead of game companies performing demos at E3 for journalists, the developers could bypass and give a demo straight to the masses.  New guildies could be tutored on a raid.  Personal vendettas could be resolved.  The list is endless.  I am pretty excited about this, and maybe I will find something worthwhile to stream in the future.

–Ravious
on the arm of a blind man

Best Pricing Model

I must credit Wizard 101 for having the best pricing model of any MMO. There are no close competitors. First, you have two options: monthly subscription or pay by the area. The former includes not only the standard discount for multi-month subscriptions, but also a family plan for multiple accounts. You have probably heard about this from other reviews, but if you want to play with your kids, you get a per-account price only slightly higher than the per-month fee on a year-long subscription. This seems like a much better offer than a zebra mount.

The pay-by-zone option is what I always thought D&D Online should have been using: buy the dungeons like you would buy pen-and-paper modules. You buy crowns (500-750 per dollar, depending on how many you buy at once), and you can use those to buy zones or for some microtransactions I haven’t explored. $10 gets you the full Wizard City plus a little of Krokotopia. $80 gets you lifetime access to the entire game, with some change left over. If you thought the Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ $200 lifetime subscription option was awesome, how can you beat that? About $20 of that $80 is Grizzleheim, a five-zone “world”; I will let others argue about whether that should be considered a regular update or a first expansion pack. (Pay-by-zone does not pair up with the family account thing.)

Oh, and there’s a non-time-limited free trial.

I have been noticing game cards at the gas station lately, and I see that Wizard 101 has them as well. And they come with an exclusive bonus pet, that’s nice. If you were considering dropping $10 to try a month or the rest of Wizard City, this is probably your better option. Hmm, maybe I will swing by 7-11 sometime and give the rest of Wizard City a shot.

: Zubon